The father of Spain’s solar tax works, now, for a PV company

From pv magazine Spain

José Manuel Soria was Spain's minister of industry, energy and tourism from December 2011 to April 2016, and is still well known in the Spanish renewable energy sector for being the promoter of the so-called ‘solar tax,' which was introduced in 2015 and for more three years completely halted the development of rooftop PV in Spain.

Although installations with a capacity of up to 10 kW were exempted, the measure had a dissuasive effect on smaller systems because many homeowners feared the rules may be further extended, abruptly, and be applied to them with a retroactive effect. Soria, on the other hand, was also responsible for the moratorium on renewables, which in 2012 stopped, abruptly, a series of incentives granted to the renewable energy sector, and also introduced a series of retroactive cuts for the feed-in tariffs granted by the country's energy provisions.

Coming to our days, Soria seems to have a completely different idea of the role of solar and renewables as he has recently been named president of Island Green Power España SL, the Spanish unit of U.K.-based developer of large photovoltaic plants, Island Green Power.

The company has more than 25 years of experience in the energy industry, 10 of them specifically in the photovoltaic solar energy sector. It has already carried out more than 900 MW of projects around the world.

According to its web page, it is currently developing seven projects in Spain, totaling 329.9 MW.